T he fourth iteration of the 1992 law that allows the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to levy user fees on drug companies contains several reforms that could create a major change in how the agency monitors the safety of new drugs after they enter the market. Lawmakers are using reauthorization of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) to overhaul the agency's authorities and responsibili...

OBJECTIVE Analysis of the implementation process for a national user fees abolition policy aimed at children under age five organized in Niger since October 2006. METHODS This was a study of contrasted cases. Two districts were selected, Keita and Abalak; Keita is supported by an international NGO. In 2009, we carried out socio-anthropological surveys in all the health facilities of both dist...

In recent years, governments of several low-income countries have taken decisive action by removing fully or partially user fees in the health sector. In this study, we review recent reforms in six sub-Saharan African countries: Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ghana, Liberia, Senegal and Uganda. The review describes the processes and strategies through which user fee removal reforms have been implemente...

background in early 1990s, tanzania like other african countries, adopted health sector reform (hsr). the most strongly held centralisation system that informed the nature of services provision including health was, thus, disintegrated giving rise to decentralisation system. it was within the realm of hsr process, user fees were introduced in the health sector. along with user fees, various typ...

This paper examines regional differences in the effect of user fee removal in rural areas of Zambia on the use of health institutions for delivery. The analysis uses quarterly longitudinal data covering 2003q1-2008q4. When unobserved heterogeneity, spatial dependence and quantitative supply-side factors are incorporated in the Interrupted Time Series (ITS) design, user fee removal is found to i...

The two most important aspects of openness have to do with free availability over the internet and as few restrictions as possible on the use of the resource. There should be no technical barriers (undisclosed source code), no price barriers (subscriptions, licensing fees, pay-perview fees) and as few legal permission barriers as possible (copyright and licensing restrictions) for the end-user....